Applied physics articles within Nature Materials

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light-induced artificial goosebumps on liquid crystal elastomer skin are used to precisely manipulate passive microstructures, achieving a localized and controllable system for programmable micromachines.

    • Mingchao Zhang
    • , Aniket Pal
    •  & Metin Sitti

  • News & Views |

    Metamaterial adhesives with nonlinear cut architectures provide strong and reversible adhesion, directionality and spatially programmable adhesive strength.

    • Geonjun Choi
    •  & Hoon Eui Jeong

  • Perspective |

    Colloidal nanocrystals can form into periodic superlattices exhibiting collective vibrations from the correlated motion of the nanocrystals. This Perspective discusses such collective vibrations and their as-of-yet untapped potential applications for phononic crystals, acoustic metamaterials and optomechanical systems.

    • Maximilian Jansen
    • , William A. Tisdale
    •  & Vanessa Wood

  • News & Views |

    Scientists have designed a foldable, mechanical analogue of integrated circuits that could be used as a platform to fabricate intelligent metamaterials.

    • Christian D. Santangelo

  • News & Views |

    The introduction of crystalline defects experimentally reveals elusive signatures of topological phenomena in acoustic metamaterials.

    • Marc Serra-Garcia

  • Editorial |

    Innovations in soft materials design and engineering are delivering promising functional components for advanced soft robotic applications.

  • News & Views |

    An interplay between deswelling and buckling in a polymer gel is harnessed to achieve sequential snap events for repeatable jumping motion, opening the door to autonomously moving soft robots.

    • Johannes T. B. Overvelde

  • News & Views |

    Clever 3D-printed acoustic materials allow probing a new higher-order semimetallic topological phase using audible sound.

    • R. Fleury

  • Article |

    A second-order topological Weyl semimetal based on a 3D-printed acoustic crystal, exhibiting Weyl points, Fermi arc surface states, and hinge states, has been experimentally demonstrated.

    • Qiang Wei
    • , Xuewei Zhang
    •  & Suotang Jia

  • News & Views |

    Granular aluminium — a superconductor with high kinetic inductance — has been used to create a superinductor for a fluxonium superconducting qubit.

    • Joel I-Jan Wang
    •  & William D. Oliver

  • Article |

    Mobile micromachines with advanced configurations and functions self-assembled through designed dielectrophoretic interactions between structural and motor units.

    • Yunus Alapan
    • , Berk Yigit
    •  & Metin Sitti

  • News & Views |

    Higher-order topological acoustic metamaterials on kagome lattices, which host topologically protected corner states, can confine sound at corners. This may lead to applications of acoustic metamaterials in local acoustic field enhancement, trapping and manipulating of particles, and acoustic sensing and probing.

    • Zhengyou Liu

  • Letter |

    A second-order topological insulator in an acoustical metamaterial with a breathing kagome lattice, supporting one-dimensional edge states and zero-dimensional corner states is demonstrated.

    • Haoran Xue
    • , Yahui Yang
    •  & Baile Zhang

  • Perspective |

    Electrolyte gating of complex oxides enables substantial control of electronic phase transitions, allowing electrical control of complex phenomena. Here, the role of both electrostatic and electrochemical mechanisms in this process is elucidated.

    • Chris Leighton

  • Article |

    In this type of thermal cloak, when a fluid circulates around the object of interest, the temperature perturbation is minimized as the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid becomes very high due to convective effects.

    • Ying Li
    • , Ke-Jia Zhu
    •  & C.-W. Qiu

  • Article |

    Topologically protected edge states can be observed when combining two Si-based phononic crystals of opposite phases, as well as on-chip elastic wave splitting via partition of edges states at the intersection of topological channels.

    • Mou Yan
    • , Jiuyang Lu
    •  & Zhengyou Liu

  • Article |

    Electrostrain, an important value for actuators, larger than 1% is only achieved in single crystals. Here, a pseudo-ternary polycrystalline ferroelectric with spontaneous lattice strain has 1.3% electrostrain, which may enable cheaper piezoelectrics.

    • Bastola Narayan
    • , Jaskaran Singh Malhotra
    •  & Rajeev Ranjan

  • News & Views |

    Sound waves drive the organization of particle scatterers into stable structures, exhibiting phononic band gaps that heal from disturbances and adapt to changes in the drive.

    • Kyle J. M. Bishop

  • Letter |

    An artificial phononic graphene for surface acoustic waves on a LiNbO3 integrated platform allows for the experimental demonstration of pseudo-diffusion transport and a temporal beating effect similar to the ‘Zitterbewegung’ phenomenon.

    • Si-Yuan Yu
    • , Xiao-Chen Sun
    •  & Yan-Feng Chen

  • Progress Article |

    Thermal vibrations in materials can be controlled via interference (in a similar way to light propagating in layered structures) to produce a thermal bandgap, an approach promising for thermoelectric applications.

    • Martin Maldovan

  • News & Views |

    Membrane-based acoustic resonators of subwavelength dimensions achieve nearly perfect acoustic absorption.

    • Mathias Fink

  • Article |

    Acoustic impedance-matched surfaces do not reflect incident waves. Traditional means of acoustic absorption have so far resulted in imperfect impedance matching and bulky structures, or require costly and sophisticated electrical design. Inspired by electromagnetic metamaterials, a subwavelength acoustically reflecting surface with hybrid resonances and impedance-matched to airborne sound at tunable frequencies is now demonstrated.

    • Guancong Ma
    • , Min Yang
    •  & Ping Sheng

  • News & Views |

    By following three empirical rules it is possible to design and fabricate magnetic heterostructures or even devices whose magnetization can be controlled by means of circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses, instead of applied magnetic fields.

    • Alexey V. Kimel

  • News & Views |

    Friction classically decreases with decreasing load. Nanoscale measurements on chemically modified graphite now show an opposite trend related to local deformation, which could serve as a probe for determining the exfoliation energy of layered materials.

    • Kathryn J. Wahl

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